Matt Newman, joined AbacusBio in 2023.

Matt is a Senior Economist with vast agricultural production experience and affinity with New Zealand livestock sectors. Over the last 25 years Matt has developed and led Economic teams for Beef+Lamb New Zealand, DairyNZ and MPI.
Matt specialises in farm systems analysis, benchmarking, forecasting and environmental impact assessments.

Before joining AbacusBio, Matt was involved in the below projects:

• Re-establish of MPI’s Farm Monitoring programme, working in partnership with pastural, arable and horticulture sector organisations.
• Analysis to understand the likely impacts of potential freshwater regulation for Regional Councils (Southland, Otago, Waikato, Otago).
• Assessment of reducing GhG emissions on sheep and beef and dairy farms
• Quantification of the annual supplementary feeds consumed by NZ dairy cows
• Debt stress testing on the viability of NZ dairy farm businesses
• Analysis of the likely impacts of various cattle diseases entering NZ
• Cost-benefit analysis to determine who should pay for biosecurity incursions e.g. Tb, M.bovis

Matt is New Zealand’s representative on the International Farm Comparison Network (IFCN).
He has also been the president of the NZ Agriculture Resource Economics Society (NZAGRC).
Matt was the chair of an international conference (Australian Agriculture Resource Economic Society – AARES) held in Rotorua in 2015.

As an Economist, Matt often works with complex issues and ambiguity, but his strengths are taking a holistic (big picture) approach and being able to simplify issues and results for a wide audience including farms, consultants, industry and government.
Matt is a team player who enjoys engaging with people. He gains a lot of satisfaction from coaching younger team members to succeed.

Outside of work, Matt loves spending time in the outdoors – on his family lifestyle block in the Wairarapa, running and tramping. He also plays competitive squash, which is great excuse for a few beers and to meet different people. Matt relaxes by reading a book on the beach, watching sports or travelling to new places.